Alienware M18x Laptop Review

Media Encoding

Video Encoding

Our first media encoding test uses the latest CS5 software from Adobe. This software accesses all of the cores/threads available on our processors and is therefore an ideal application for media enthusiasts. To test performance we run a 1920×1080 file (custom recording) through the encoder set to 1080p 24 HQ using the H.264 Blu-Ray codec within the application.

Music Encoding
Our music conversion test takes an 18 track lossless album and converts it using dBpoweramp into 128Kbps Mp3 format. dBpoweramp is a multi-threaded application which allows us to convert a track on each core/thread, at any one time.

In this test we can again see the benefit of using the latest generation of Intel CPUs in the M18x, our review sample completing the Adobe test over a minute faster than we saw last month on the MSI GX660R which used the i5-460M CPU. GPU assisted media conversion is also good with the NVIDIA GPU giving us the best performance and image quality. Music encoding is equally as impressive with the M18x rivalling our desktop 2500K/P67 system in encoding time (that desktop scored 34s in a previous review).